Study of the month: Why we should talk more about health and climate
Climate change has serious consequences for human health: more intense heatwaves, the spread of diseases to new regions, wildfire smoke, and increasing allergies all directly affect people’s bodies and wellbeing. These issues impact not only vulnerable groups, but everyone, yet many people are not aware of this connection. Research shows that communicating the health impacts […]
Faktenwissen über den Klimawandel und Klimapolitik
In unsere Umfragen im Forschungsprojekt Down2Earth integrieren wir seit 2015 ein kleines Wissensquiz über Klimapolitik. In diesem Beitrag möchten wir über die Antworten und Hintergrundinformationen zu den Wissensfragen informieren. Prüfen Sie gern selbst, ob Sie die richtigen Antworten gewusst hätten. Forschende des Yale Program on Climate Change Communication argumentierten in einer vor kurzem veröffentlichten Studie, […]
Study of the month: How to reach young people
Young people will be most affected by the consequences of climate change, a problem which many of them are highly aware of. Yet in the increasingly entrenched and polarized climate debates, they are often more spectators than participants—partly because they have limited opportunities to play a role in political processes or influence decisions in business. […]
Study of the month: How to Promote Adaptive Coping with Climate Anxiety
The threats posed by climate change are enormous: extreme weather events, rising sea levels, accelerating species extinction and more dominate media coverage — and understandably cause fear. However, it is both important and very much possible to not become paralyzed by these fears, and instead learn to deal with such negative feelings and worries constructively. In […]
Study of the Month: How to Effectively Counter Climate Mis- and Disinformation
It’s a bit like pulling weeds: false and misleading information keeps cropping up in conversations about the causes, consequences, and solutions to the climate crisis, severely hampering constructive debate. Tackling each piece of misinformation individually is labor-intensive and time-consuming, so we ask what else can be done to improve the situation in the long term? […]
From Farmers to Activists: A Study of Indian Climate Movements
India, a key emerging economy of the Global South, faces the harsh realities of climate change—droughts, floods, heatwaves, storms. Farmers, historically involved in several environmental movements, seem absent from the climate activism scene. For her master’s thesis, student researcher Pritha Mandal explores why. It is the early 1970s…Indian farmers in the Garhwal region of the […]
Study of the Month: Mediating trust in content about science
Many people rely on scientific information for decision-making, both in everyday life and during times of crisis. In this regard, media play a crucial role because they mediate trust in science, but by now, few studies have directly examined how they do so. In a study recently published in Public Understanding of Science that was […]
Study of the Month: Unveiling the Backlash in Public Opinion on Climate Change
The Paris Agreement and worldwide climate protests in 2018/19 seemed to signal the beginning of a fundamental societal transformation. However, recent developments in public engagement with climate issues in Germany, a traditionally climate-aware country, call this into question. In our “Study of the Month” series, we highlight recent research relevant to climate communication and social […]
Vortrag: Medien in der Klimakrise
Der Journalismus vernachlässigt immer noch das Thema Klimakrise. Und wenn sie thematisiert wird, dann drohen Debatten in die Polarisierungsfalle zu geraten. An den Rändern des Berufsstands rumort es aber: viele jüngere Journalist:innen geben sich nicht länger mit einer passiven Vermittlung von Politikerstatements und Routineberichterstattung zum Klimawandel zufrieden. Transformativer Journalismus will die Gesellschaft kritisch und konstruktiv […]
Decreasing Climate Media Coverage in the United States and Germany
Our dataset of climate media coverage in the United States and Germany reveals a worrying development. After a few years of elevated meda attention to climate change, the share of coverage dedicated to the topic is receding in most media in both countries. The following graphs provide some detail. Overall coverage of climate change is […]